create a world where women can walk ANYWHERE, EVERYWHERE

when someone refers to women as “the underdogs”? at the time i was too busy laughing to consider being mad.

The Forecast Shows RAINN On The Web
October 12, 2006 by Jill Marie Elliott

^{With Tori Amos on the advisory board, Rachel Bilson & Kevin Smith lending their support, being named one of “America’s 100 Best Charities” by Worth Magazine, and having just honored the first one million callers who have received help from the National Sexual Assault Hotline, I’d say RAINN is definitely on the radar!}

Now the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) is proud to launch the pilot phase of their National Sexual Assault Online Hotline. This is an essential lifeline for sexual assault survivors who may not be ready or have restrictions making a connection via a telephone line.

After months of collaboration with leading security software designers, RAINN developed a privacy-protected instant messaging format for online communication. Survivors can communicate in real-time with trained crisis support volunteers with the confidence of knowing that no trace or transcripts are stored. Furthermore, a tutorial is given on clearing private data from their personal computer after an online visit.

During its pilot phase the online hotline hours are Monday through Friday, from 4pm to 6pm ET, eventually becoming a 24/7 sanctuary. For more information regarding their online counseling, how you can volunteer and other ways RAINN offers support, visit their website at http://www.rainn.org .

Slaying of Afghan activist sounds alarm for women

^{Call her the Susan B. Anthony of Afghanistan. Safia Ama Jan fought for women’s rights in a chauvinistic society. After the fall of the repressive Taliban regime in late 2001, she pushed women to vote and take part in civic life.}

“This country has had two-and-a-half decades during which both males and females have been left uneducated,” she said two years ago. “You cannot change their minds overnight. We need some time.”

Tragically, Ama Jan didn’t get that time.

On Monday, suspected Taliban assassins gunned her down as she went to work in a taxi. The southern Kandahar government, where she ran the women’s department, had denied her requests for a bodyguard.

Ama Jan’s death at age 65, like the proverbial canary in a coal mine, raises a larger, and very disturbing, question: Is she a symbol of where Afghanistan’s fledgling democracy is heading? It’s not just that she was a victim of a dangerously resurgent Taliban. She was also facing an uphill battle in her fight for women’s rights in Afghan society more broadly.

Her courage, and that of many other Afghan women, was bolstered by the Bush administration after it ousted the Taliban. The United States pushed for democracy and insisted that women take full part. It helped get girls back into school (the Taliban had kept them illiterate and at home) and helped craft a constitution ensuring women one quarter of the seats in the new parliament.

But now, women’s equality is moving in the wrong direction. “We do have rights on paper, but we don’t have them in reality,” Fatima Kazimyan, one women’s representative, told The Philadelphia Inquirer.

The signs are everywhere. Female members of parliament say they are not taken seriously. Most have been dropped from high government positions.

The most obvious problem is one of declining security. The Taliban are attacking girls’ schools. NATO forces, which have taken over from U.S. troops in the south, are facing fierce battles. Warlords reign in many areas. The heroin trade, which fuels both the Taliban and the warlords, is at an all-time high.

But security concerns can’t be an excuse to dim the spotlight on women’s rights. On Tuesday, at a news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Bush lamented Ama Jan’s death — to illustrate the nature of the enemy in the war on terror.

Also disturbing, though, is the sidelining of women in the government and courts — hampering their struggle against the spread of harsh sharia law, which denies women most rights. This trend is replicating itself in Iraq, which, under Saddam Hussein’s brutal yet secular regime, was one of the Middle East countries where women experienced the least discrimination.

Renewed U.S. focus on the everyday battles of women such as Safia Ama Jan can better honor her and what she fought for — perhaps even, one day, with a coin of her own.

Posted at 12:22 AM/ET, September 28, 2006 in Foreign Affairs – Middle East – Editorial, USA TODAY

this is just silly.

^{The issue for states will be whether to add the vaccine for the most dangerous strains of Human Papillomavirus (HPV), which causes cervical cancers in women, to the list of shots such as measles, mumps, polio and whooping cough required for admittance at school.}

^{An estimated 9,700 American women are diagnosed with cervical cancer every year; 3,700 die of the disease. Worldwide, cervical cancer is the second most common cancer among women, afflicting 470,000 women and leading to 233,000 deaths a year, according to the Food and Drug Administration.}

^{But unlike other contagious childhood diseases, HPV is a sexually transmitted disease. The distinction already is spurring some conservative groups to say states shouldn’t mandate that girls get the vaccine, because the only way to catch the cancer-causing disease is through sexual contact.}

^{Linda Klepacki, an analyst on sexual health for Focus on the Family, which promotes abstinence until marriage, said the reason for inoculating schoolchildren for diseases like measles doesn’t apply to the cervical cancer vaccine.}

^{“HPV cannot be communicated by sitting in a public school classroom. It’s communicated only by sexual behavior. Because of that reason, we believe that parents should be the primary decision makers. … It’s not something you can catch, but it’s something you really have to go out and get,” she said.}

^{Klepacki acknowledged that women who remain celibate until marriage still could be at risk, if their husbands contracted the virus earlier.}

A Growing Transit Trend

Rio is the most recent in a growing list of cities to enact such a policy. Tokyo, Mexico City, Mumbai and Cairo already have women-only cars in some or all of their train lines.

An Internet poll conducted in March by O Globo, one of Brazil’s largest newspapers, found that 64 percent of 2,288 respondents believed that such a law would reduce abuse and disrespect toward women.

Of 20 women interviewed by Women’s eNews, the majority was enthusiastic about it. Many said they felt more at ease during their commutes. Five men were questioned and all disliked the sex-segregated cars.

is this really the answer? how sad if so.

more news:

“At a clinic that treats obesity-related diseases, a booklet left by a writer named Muhammad al-Habdan, warned that if girls’ schools began P.E., Saudi girls would have to change into workout gear — and good girls should not disrobe outside their homes. Changing in a locker room might cause them to lose the shyness that is the hallmark of good morals, the booklet warned.
It went on to say that the girls might become attracted to each other after seeing their classmates in tight leotards and tops. Changing such attitudes has become the goal of many health-conscious women who are alarmed about the rising rate of obesity in their country.”

addendum: note that piety and good health are both admirable goals and should not have to be mutually exclusive.

The U.S. is becoming a mecca for embryonic sex selection. The practice, in which clinics make multiple embryos and freeze or flush those of the wrong sex (e.g., all the girls if you want a boy), is banned in many countries. Thousands of couples from those countries are coming to the U.S. to have the procedure; more than half the clients at one clinic are foreign. Criticisms: 1) It’s wrong to kill embryos just for being male or female. 2) If everyone does this, a shortage of women in China and India will cause social disaster. 3) What other harmless traits will we flush embryos for next? Defenses: 1) We don’t flush most embryos; we freeze them. 2) Most Americans and Canadians want girls, so the selection evens out. 3) We believe in “reproductive choice”; if you don’t like sex selection, don’t do it. 4) Doing it at the embryonic stage is better than the common foreign practice of aborting female fetuses or killing baby girls. (For an update on the 500,000 Indian fetuses reportedly aborted each year for being female, click here. )

something to cheer about :).

Women Strike Back Online Against Street Harassment
Run Date: 05/09/06
By Rachel Corbett
WeNews correspondent

A group of young activists are tired of men who leer at them or make degrading comments. They are fighting back with their own weapons: camera phones, blogs, online protests and forums, plus an action campaign timed for “street harassment season.”

Women are using their camera phones to holla back

NEW YORK (WOMENSENEWS)—On a cold day in February, Emily May, a 25-year-old employee for a low-income housing and employment nonprofit in New York, bundled up and left work.

As she turned onto Broadway, the main north-south thoroughfare in Manhattan, two men heading toward her interrupted her thoughts. One tapped his friend and gave May a long look up and down.

"Yo baby, you're gorgeous!" the man said to her.
"I wanna hit that!"

May whipped out her camera phone.

"Sir, can I take your picture?"

"Why do you want to take my picture?"

"Because I'm taking pictures of everyone who thinks I'm pretty today."

What the men did not know was that May is part of a growing movement of women around the country and the globe turning the table on harassers.

article continues

Women, Girls Draw 25 Times More Malicious Chat Messages

By Gregg Keizer, TechWeb News

Internet chat room users with female names are 25 times more likely to receive threatening and sexually-explicit private messages than those armed with male or ambiguous monikers, a university study reported Tuesday.

According to research conducted by a University of Maryland professor and one of his computer engineering students, female usernames in IRC (Internet Rely Chat) rooms received an average of 163 malicious private messages each day, while male and ambiguous usernames were targeted by an average of just 4 and 25 daily messages, respectively.

continued…

some of my favorites:

http://www.womensenews.org/
http://www.about-face.org/
http://www.unifem.org/
http://www.feministing.com/

and a few new ones i recently learned about:

http://blogs.health.yahoo.com/intlwomen/
http://www.therealhot100.org/
http://www.ywtf.org/

i’d love to hear about others if there are suggestions..